_The teachers will cost nothing at all._ They will all be
members of our new society, and they will give, in addition to or in
lieu of an annual subscription, their personal services as gratuitous
teachers. This part of the scheme is sure to command your sympathies,
the more so if you consider the current of contemporary thought. More
and more we are getting volunteer labour in almost every department.
Everywhere, in every town and in every parish, along with the
professional workers, are those who work for nothing. As for the women
who work for nothing, the sisters of religious orders, the women who
collect rents, the women who live among the poor, those who read aloud
to patients in hospitals, those who go about in the poorest places,
their name is legion. And as for the men, we have no cause to be
ashamed of the part which they take in this great voluntary movement,
which is the noblest thing the world has ever seen, and which I
believe to be only just beginning. All our great religious societies,
all our hospitals, all our philanthropic societies, are worked by
unpaid committees. All our School wards over the whole country, not to
speak of the House of Commons, are unpaid. At this very moment there
are springing up here and there in East London actual
monasteries--only without monastic vows--in which live young men who
devote themselves, either wholly or in part, to work among the poor,
often to evening and night work after their own day's labours.
Pages:
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289